


(Dis)Orientation

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Series: Art College [1]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-06
Updated: 2010-09-06
Packaged: 2017-10-11 12:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in September 2174 on the Saturnian moons of Calypso, Telesto and Tethys, in this open-ended AU Arnold Rimmer, aged 25, has made the decision to quit the Space Corps and pursue an arts degree. In this part he meets his new roommate, Dave Lister, an engineering student with a lax attitude towards unimportant things like classes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Dis)Orientation

**Author's Note:**

> Red Dwarf characters belong to Grant Naylor Productions and the BBC.
> 
> Dedicated to Ver, Nat, Caz, Fia, and Bitsy. Always and always.
> 
> * * *

The notion of a random roommate appealed to him at first, a part of the whole art college experience. Someone picked for him out of the other boarders at sARTurn; it was a stupid, stupid name but to Arnold it represented a new direction in his life, and most importantly that direction was away from his parents. sARTurn was on Calypso, part of the cultural centre of the Saturnian moons, and simply being on a different moon to his family was already taking a load off his shoulders (even if the first thing he did once he’d unpacked was write a letter to his mother).

Said roommate still hadn’t made an appearance by three days into the semester, and Arnold was beginning to wonder, with an undercurrent of panic, whether this ‘David Lister’ person had dropped out or something. The panic was because he was gripped by the certainty that somehow the bloke had seen his name on the room assignment sheet and somehow recognised it as that of a total loser and somehow made a run for it. There were frequent shuttles to the other Saturnian moons, although the shuttle base was housed in a separate dome from sARTurn, so the students wouldn’t be disrupted in their creative endeavours by the sound of shuttles taking off and landing.

It was not entirely a relief when he finally turned up.

Arnold was asleep at the time, because it was three in the morning, and when he heard the doorknob rattle, for a moment his mental state had him convinced that he was back home on Io and it was one of his brothers sneaking in to glue his hair to the pillow or something equally humiliating. Then he woke up a little more, remembered where he was, and called out, ‘Who’s there?’ as bravely as any freshman who had thus far escaped hazing could manage.

‘Me,’ was the less than enlightening response; as Arnold groped for the lamp switch a key scraped into the lock and the door swung open, revealing a young, dreadlocked man who was grinning sheepishly and was also mostly covered in blue paint. ‘Sorry to wake you, man, I couldn’t find me keys.’

Arnold couldn’t decide if he hated the man or not. ‘Are you David Lister?’

‘Yeah, but call me Dave. You’re, ehm, Arnold Rimmer?’

‘Yes. But I go by “Ace”.’ Maybe this time he’d instil the nickname early and it’d stick.

Dave dragged a single battered wheeled suitcase into the room; it had a guitar case tied precariously on top of it. Arnold sat up in bed and watched him do what passed for unpacking, which consisted of digging out a handful of mismatched socks and underwear and stuffing it into the top drawer of the dresser beside his bed, then parking the suitcase and guitar case up against the dresser and flopping down onto his bed, stretching out for a moment with a dramatic sigh before bouncing back up to start wrestling with his bootlaces. The paint was flaking off him all over his bedspread.

‘Why are you so late?’ Arnold asked tentatively. ‘The semester’s already started.’

‘Oh, ‘s okay, I’ve been around, I was just stayin’ with this girl I met on orientation camp, but she got tired of me and her roommate kept throwin’ shoes at the bed and screechin’ at us, so I got out.’ His boots hit the floor and he sprawled out on his side, facing Arnold across the decidedly too small gap between their beds. ‘Been lonely, have you?’

Arnold had gone on the orientation camp as well, but he hadn’t ended up missing for three days afterwards, and it seemed like that made him the exception rather than the rule. It had been on Tethys, just a short hop from Calypso, but the campsite had been worlds away. Whereas Calypso was mostly buildings, albeit elegantly designed ones, the dome they’d gone to on Tethys had been wild with plants and animals and then the campsite plonked in the middle of it all.

Most of the other students had been Dave’s age or a little older, newly freed from high school and determined to make the most of it. Arnold had slunk around the fringes of conversations, overhearing things that had made him wonder just what he was getting himself into. Mind you, considering that one of the counsellors had set out a box of a hundred and forty-four condoms in the common room with the admonishment that he didn’t want anyone coming back from the camp pregnant, and they’d all disappeared within half an hour, it was pretty clear what everyone else was getting themselves into.

He hadn’t felt any more oriented after the camp than he had before it.

Dave was giving him an inquiring look and Arnold realised he’d been woolgathering. ‘No.’ _Yes._ ‘I was just wondering. Are you studying the guitar?’

Dave grinned. ‘Nah. It’s just a hobby. I’m doin’ mostly engineerin’ stuff, across on the other campus, but ‘cause I only changed courses yesterday I’m still livin’ here; there’re no rooms open over there.’

‘Won’t that get annoying?’ The other campus in question was on Telesto, the moon on the far side of Tethys; it was inventively called saTECH. Every time Arnold passed a sign with the name of either campus on it he had to restrain himself from taking out a pen and correcting the capitalisation.

‘Nah, there’s a shuttle every twenty minutes, only takes ten minutes to get there, like takin’ the bus.’ He grinned again; he had one of those faces that seemed designed for a constant grin, like some sort of deranged Cheshire Cat. ‘‘Sides, I’ve got classes over here too, I’m stickin’ with the pottery – sorry, _ceramics_. I figure I need somethin’ to break up all the serious stuff.’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ Arnold said. His own timetable was comprised mostly of theoretical subjects. He couldn’t avoid a yawn, but fortunately Dave took it at face value rather than as an insult, and his grin crumpled into a contrite look.

‘Sorry, man, I’m keepin’ ya awake. Turn that light off, go on, I bet you’ve got _morning_ classes, you need your sleep.’

Arnold snapped the light off and slid back down into bed. ‘Don’t you? Have morning classes, I mean?’

‘Haven’t gone to any yet. Maybe I do. The first week’s always that gettin’ to know you smeg and all of that. I’d rather just do that on me own time than by goin’ around the room tryin’ to remember everyone’s name and favourite colour. But then you know that, you must’ve been here a while.’

‘I’m a mature-age student, _actually_.’

Dave laughed in the darkness. ‘No offence. You just looked pretty settled in.’ He paused. ‘Nice pyjamas.’

Arnold sighed. ‘What happened to going to sleep.’

‘Sorry, sorry. It’s me first time off Earth, I’m just a bit revved up.’

‘You’re from Earth?’ He hadn’t thought anyone still lived there, not really, but Dave had an accent that Arnold had never heard before; it certainly wasn’t the would-be upper-class tone he was used to back h—on Io. ‘Where from?’

‘Liverpool. You’re not from Earth?’

‘No, Io.’

‘Ah, so this is your end of the System. Are all the moons really similar? Like, because of the terraformin’?’

‘Not especially.’ Arnold stifled another yawn. ‘They’ve all got their own purposes, it’s not like Earth. Everything’s got its own place.’

Dave went silent for a long time. Then: ‘D’you like it?’

Arnold had to consider that for a while. ‘Mostly,’ he said in the end, not elaborating on the fact that sameness got dull every so often, that he’d pulled up stakes from a steady Space Corps career to throw himself into this instead, that this was about as far from what he’d started thinking of as his place in life as he could feasibly get.

Dave’s laughter was muffled as he flomped over to lie on his stomach. ‘You’re a man of many words.’

‘Yes,’ Arnold said, quite deadpan, and then they both laughed, Arnold surprised at himself. The nerves that had been butterflying around his stomach since he’d first sat down at his desk back on _Red Dwarf_ and penned his letter of resignation finally seemed to be settling down.

There was a long, mostly comfortable silence before Dave began to snore. Arnold grimaced and then sighed. He had a roommate who would talk to him instead of down to him and who hadn’t immediately turned on his heel and walked out the minute he’d seen who he was sharing a room with. That was worth a little snoring, wasn’t it? For that matter, Dave had been _friendly_.

That thought was a little disorienting, but Arnold was coming to think that all this disorientation was just a part of finding his way on this new life path.


End file.
